LIBRARY 
UN^VERSIJY  OF 
DAVIS 


PISTOLS  FOR  TWO 


BY 
OWEN  HATTERAS 


NEW  YORK  _Jfc^"^     MCMXVII 

MtaMMMBi 

ALFRED  '  A  '  KNOPF 


Published,  September,  1917 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GEORGE  JEAN  NATHAN 5 

H.  L.  MENCKEN  .....  21 


PISTOLS  FOR  TWO 


BIOGRAPHY  fails,  like  psychology,  because  it  so 
often  mistakes  complexity  for  illumination.  Its 
aim  is  to  present  a  complete  picture  of  a  man; 
its  effect  is  usually  to  make  an  impenetrable  mystery  of 
him.  The  cause  of  this,  it  seems  to  me,  lies  in  the  fact 
that  the  biographer  always  tries  to  explain  him  utterly, 
to  account  for  him  in  every  detail,  to  give  an  unbroken 
coherence  to  all  his  acts  and  ideas.  The  result  is  a  wax 
dummy,  as  smooth  as  glass  but  as  unalive  as  a  dill  pickle. 
It  is  by  no  such  process  of  exhaustion  that  we  get  our 
notions  of  the  people  we  really  know.  We  see  them,  not 
as  complete  images,  but  as  processions  of  flashing  points. 
Their  personalities,  so  to  speak,  are  not  revealed  bril 
liantly  and  in  the  altogether,  but  as  shy  things  that  peep 
out,  now  and  then,  from  inscrutable  swathings,  giving 
us  a  hint,  a  suggestion,  a  moment  of  understanding. 
Does  a  man  really  know  what  is  going  on  in  his  wife's 
mind?  Not  if  she  has  a  mind.  Wliat  he  knows  is  only 
that  infinitesimal  part  which  she  reveals,  sometimes 
deliberately  and  even  truculently,  but  more  often  naively, 
surreptitiously,  accidentally.  He  judges  her  as  a  human 
being,  not  by  anything  approaching  entire  knowledge 
of  her,  but  by  bold  and  scattered  inferences.  He  sees 
her  soul,  in  so  far  as  he  sees  it  at  all,  in  the  way  she  buttons 
her  boots,  in  the  way  she  intrigues  for  a  kiss,  in  the  way 
she  snaps  her  eye  at  him  when  he  has  been  naughty  — 


PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 


he  interprets  her  ego  in  terms  of  her  taste  in  ribbons, 
the  scent  of  her  hair,  her  quarrels  with  her  sisters,  her 
fashion  of  eating  artichokes,  her  skill  at  home  millinery, 
the  debris  on  her  dressing  table,  her  preferences  in  the 
theater,  her  care  of  her  teeth. 

Thus,  by  slow  degrees,  he  accumulates  an  image  of 
her  —  an  image  changing  incessantly,  and  never  more 
than  half  sensed.  After  long  years,  perhaps,  he  begins 
to  know  her  after  a  fashion.  That  is,  he  knows  how  many 
shredded  wheat  biscuits  she  likes  for  breakfast,  how 
much  of  his  business  she  understands,  how  long  she  can 
read  a  first-class  novel  without  napping,  what  she  thinks 
of  woolen  underwear,  the  New  Irish  Movement,  the 
family  doctor,  soft-boiled  eggs,  and  God.  .  .  . 

I  enter  upon  these  considerations  because  I  have  been 
employed  by  a  committee  of  aluminados,  heeled  well 
enough  to  pay  my  honorarium,  to  conjure  up  recognizable 
images  of  MM.  George  Jean  Nathan  and  H.  L.  Mencken, 
that  their  scattered  partisans  and  the  public  generally 
may  see  them  more  clearly.  The  job  has  its  difficulties, 
for  save  in  their  joint  editorial  concern  with  The  Smart 
Set  magazine  and  their  common  antipathy  to  certain 
prevailing  sophistries,  they  are  no  more  alike  than  a 
hawk  and  a  handsaw.  But  in  one  other  thing,  at  least, 
they  also  coalesce,  and  that  is  in  the  paucity  of  news 
about  them.  Most  other  magazine  editors  are  con 
stantly  in  the  papers  —  discoursing  on  the  literary  art, 
agitating  for  this  or  that,  getting  themselves  interviewed. 
These  twain,  however,  pursue  a  more  pianissimo  course, 
and  so  not  much  is  known  about  them,  even  inaccu 
rately.  .  .  . 

II 

The  job  invites.  One  reads  regularly  what  magazine 
editors  think  of  their  contributors,  but  who  ever  reads 
what  magazine  contributors  —  of  whom  I,  Hatteras,  am 


PISTOLS     FOR     TWO 


one  —  think  of  their  editors?  A  vast  and  adventurous 
field  here  enrolls  itself,  believe  me.  I  know,  more  or  less 
intimately,  most  of  the  editors  of  the  great  American  peri 
odicals,  and  I  am  constantly  amused  by  the  inaccuracy 
of  the  prevailing  notions  about  them  —  notions  dili 
gently  fostered,  in  many  cases,  by  their  own  more  or  less 
subtle  chicane.  Consider,  for  example,  the  dean  of  the 
order,  M.  George  Harvey,  of  the  North  American  Review. 
His  portrait  shows  a  thoughtful  old  gentleman  reading 
a  book,  his  forefinger  pressed  affectionately  against  his 
right  frontal  sinus.  Recalling  the  high  mental  pressure 
of  his  daily  concerns,  one  concludes  at  once  that  he  is 
struggling  through  Talboys  Wheeler's  epitome  of  the 
Maha-Bharata,  or  Locke's  "Conduct  of  the  Under 
standing."  But  I  have  it  from  the  Colonel  himself  —  a 
confidence  quite  spontaneous  and  apparently  sincere  — 
that  at  the  precise  moment  the  photographer  squeezed 
the  bird  he  was  thinking  —  what?  Simply  this:  how 
much  prettier  Mile.  Mary  Pickford  would  be  if  her  lower 
limbs  were  less  richly  developed  laterally.  The  book  was 
the  Photoplay  Magazine. 

Again,  there  is  M.  Robert  H.  Davis,  editor  of  the 
Munsey  publications.  The  official  views  of  M.  Davis 
depict  him  as  a  man  of  the  great  outdoors,  a  stalker  of 
the  superior  carnivora,  a  dead  shot,  a  fisher  of  tarpons 
and  sharks,  a  rover  of  the  primeval  forests.  He  is  dressed 
up  like  a  cover  of  Field  and  Stream,  a  doggish  pipe  in  his 
mouth,  his  tropics  formidably  encircled  by  cartridges 
and  fish  worms.  But  what  are  the  facts?  The  facts 
are  that  Davis  does  all  his  fishing  in  the  Fulton  Market, 
and  that  the  bear-skin  which  in  his  pictures  he  is  seen 
holding  triumphantly  at  arm's  length  actually  graces 
his  library  floor  and  was  bought  at  Revillon  Freres.  He 
is  a  God-fearing,  mild-mannered,  and  respectable  man, 
an  admirer  of  Elihu  Root,  a  Prohibitionist,  a  member 
of  the  Red  Cross  and  the  S.  P.  C.  A.  The  only  actual 


PISTOLS     FOR     TWO 


hunting  he  ever  does  is  to  hunt  for  someone  to  agree 
with  him  that  M.  Irvin  Cobb  is  a  greater  man  than 
Mark  Twain  or  Dostoievski.  And  when  it  comes  to 
fishing,  he  has  said  all  he  has  to  say  when  he  brings  up  a 
couple  of  sardellen  out  of  the  mayonnaise. 

Yet  again,  there  are  such  fellows  as  Doty,  of  the 
Century;  Towne,  of  McClure's;  Bok,  of  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal;  Siddall,  of  the  American;  and  Fox,  of 
the  Police  Gazette.  Doty  prints  Edith  Wharton  and 
Rabindranath  Tagore  —  and  reads,  by  choice,  H.  C. 
Witwer  and  Selma  Lagerlof.  Fox  collects  Chinese  jades 
and  Sheraton  chairs,  and  is  a  member  of  the  Lake  Mohonk 
Conference.  Siddall  used  to  be  a  hoochie-coochie  side 
show  ballyhoo  with  Ringling's  Circus.  Towne,  throwing 
off  the  editorial  mask  of  moral  indignation,  writes  tender 
triolets  in  the  privacy  of  his  chambers.  Bok,  viewed 
popularly  as  a  muff  —  the  wags  of  the  National  Press 
Club  once  put  him  down  as  one  of  the  ladies  entertained 
by  them  —  is  a  rough,  wild  creature,  a  huge,  knobby 
Hollander,  with  a  voice  like  an  auctioneer's.  And  East 
man  of  the  Masses,  the  prophet  of  revolt,  the  savior  of 
the  oppressed  —  what  of  Eastman?  Eastman,  au  natu- 
rel,  gives  no  more  damns  for  the  oppressed  than  you  or 
I.  His  aim  in  life,  the  last  time  I  met  him  in  society, 
was  to  find  a  chauffeur  who  was  not  a  drunkard  and  had 
no  flair  for  debauching  the  parlor-maids.  On  this  theme 
he  pumped  up  ten  times  the  eloquence  he  has  ever  emitted 
over  Unearned  Increments  and  Wage  Slaves. 

Ill 

In  a  similar  way  are  the  MM.  George  Jean  Nathan 
and  H.  L.  Mencken  misviewed.  And  it  is  because  I 
see  here  an  opportunity  to  experiment  with  my  private 
theory  of  biography  that  I  enter  with  some  enjoyment 
the  enterprise,  thus  thrown  on  me,  of  exhibiting  the  facts. 
To  this  end,  I  herewith  present  a  list  of  the  things  I 


PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 


happen  to  know  about  the  two  gentlemen  in  question, 
leaving  whoever  cares  for  the  job  to  go  through  it  and 
construct  for  himself  a  definite  and  symmetrical  effigy.  So : 

GEORGE  JEAN  NATHAN 

He  was  born  in  Fort  Wayne,  Indiana,  February  14  and 
15  (the  stunning  event  occurred  precisely  at  12  midnight) 
1882. 

His  boyhood  ambition  was  to  be  an  African  explorer 
in  a  pith  helmet,  with  plenty  of  room  on  the  chest  ribbon 
for  medals  that  would  be  bestowed  upon  him  by  the 
beauteous  Crown  Princess  of  Luxembourg. 

He  was  educated  at  Cornell  University  and  the 
University  of  Bologna,  in  Italy. 

He  is  a  man  of  middle  height,  straight,  slim,  dark, 
with  eyes  like  the  middle  of  August,  black  hair  which  he 
brushes  back  a  la  francaise,  and  a  rather  sullen  mouth. 

He  smokes  from  the  moment  his  man  turns  off  the 
matutinal  showerbath  until  his  man  turns  it  on  again  at 
bedtime. 

He  rarely  eats  meat. 

He  lives  in  a  bachelor  apartment,  nearly  one-third  of 
which  is  occupied  by  an  ice-box  containing  refreshing 
beverages.  On  the  walls  of  his  apartment  are  the  pic 
tures  of  numerous  toothsome  creatures.  He  is  at  the 
present  time  occupied  in  writing  a  book  describing  his 
sentimental  adventures  among  them. 

He  has  published  the  following  books:  "Europe  After 
8:15,"  in  collaboration  with  Mencken  and  Mr.  Willard 
Huntington  Wright;  "Another  Book  on  the  Theater," 
"Bottoms  Up, "  and  "  Mr.  George  Jean  Nathan  Presents." 

He  has  written  for  almost  every  magazine  in  America, 
except  Good  Housekeeping  and  The  Nation. 

He  dresses  like  the  late  Ward  McAllister  and  wears 
daily  a  boutonniere  of  blue  corn  flowers. 


PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 


He  dislikes  women  over  twenty-one,  actors,  cold 
weather,  mayonnaise  dressing,  people  who  are  always 
happy,  hard  chairs,  invitations  to  dinner,  invitations  to 
serve  on  committees  in  however  worthy  a  cause,  railroad 
trips,  public  restaurants,  rye  whisky,  chicken,  daylight, 
men  who  do  not  wear  waistcoats,  the  sight  of  a  woman 
eating,  the  sound  of  a  woman  singing,  small  napkins, 
Maeterlinck,  Verhaeren,  Tagore,  Dickens,  Bataille,  fried 
oysters,  German  soubrettes,  French  John  Masons, 
American  John  Masons,  tradesmen,  poets,  married 
women  who  think  of  leaving  their  husbands,  professional 
anarchists  of  all  kinds,  ventilation,  professional  music 
lovers,  men  who  tell  how  much  money  they  have  made, 
men  who  affect  sudden  friendships  and  call  him  Georgie, 
women  who  affect  sudden  friendships  and  then  call  him 
Mr.  Nathan,  writing  letters,  receiving  letters,  talking 
over  the  telephone,  and  wearing  a  hat. 

In  religion  he  is  a  complete  agnostic,  and  views  all 
clergymen  with  a  sardonic  eye.  He  does  not  believe 
that  the  soul  is  immortal.  What  will  happen  after  death 
he  doesn't  know  and  has  never  inquired. 

He  is  subject  to  neuralgia.  He  is  a  hypochondriac 
and  likes  to  rehearse  his  symptoms.  Nevertheless,  a 
thorough  physical  examination  has  shown  that  he  is 
quite  sound.  His  Wassermann  reaction  is,  and  always 
has  been,  negative.  He  is  eugenically  fit. 

He  never  reads  the  political  news  in  the  papers.  He 
belongs  to  a  college  fraternity  and  several  university 
societies. 

The  room  in  which  he  works  is  outfitted  with  shaded 
lamps  and  heavy  hangings,  and  somewhat  suggests  a 
first-class  bordello.  He  works  with  his  coat  on  and  shuts 
the  windows  and  pulls  down  all  the  curtains.  He  writes 
with  a  pencil  on  sheets  of  yellow  paper.  He  cannot  use 
a  typewriter. 

He   detests  meeting  people,   even  on  business,   and 


PISTOLS     FOR     TWO 


swears  every  time  a  caller  is  announced  at  The  Smart  Set 
office.  He  never  receives  a  woman  caller  save  with  his 
secretary  in  the  room. 

He  wears  an  amethyst  ring.  In  his  waistcoat  pocket 
he  carries  an  elegant  golden  device  for  snapping  off  the 
heads  of  cigars.  He  has  his  shoes  shined  daily,  even 
when  it  rains. 

Like  the  late  McKinley,  he  smokes  but  half  of  a  cigar, 
depositing  the  rest  in  the  nearest  spitbox.  Like  Mark 
Twain,  he  enjoys  the  more  indelicate  varieties  of  humor. 
Like  Beethoven,  he  uses  neither  morphine  nor  cocaine. 
Like  Sitting  Bull  and  General  Joffre,  he  has  never  read 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

He  bought  Liberty  Bonds.  He  can  eat  spinach  only 
when  it  is  chopped  fine.  He  knows  French,  Latin, 
Italian,  and  German,  but  is  ignorant  of  Greek.  He  plays 
the  piano  by  ear. 

In  his  taste  in  girls,  he  runs  to  the  demi-iasse.  I  have 
never  heard  of  him  showing  any  interest  in  a  woman 
more  than  five  feet  in  height,  or  weighing  more  than 
105  pounds. 

An  anarchist  in  criticism,  he  is  in  secret  a  very  diligent 
student  of  Lessing,  Schlegel,  Hazlitt,  and  Brandes.  His 
pet  aversion,  among  critics,  was  the  late  William  Winter. 

He  has  no  interest  in  any  sport,  save  tennis  and  fencing, 
and  never  plays  cards.  He  never  accepts  an  invitation 
to  dinner  if  he  can  avoid  it  by  lying.  He  never  goes  to 
weddings,  and  knows  few  persons  who  marry. 

As  a  critic,  he  has  been  barred  from  many  theaters. 
A.  L.  Erlanger,  in  particular,  is  a  manager  who  views 
him  as  a  colleague  of  Mephisto. 

He  eats  very  little. 

He  drinks  numerous  cocktails  (invariably  the  species 
known  as  "orange  blossom,"  to  which  he  has  added 
two  drops  of  Grenadine),  a  rich  Burgundy,  and,  now  and 
then,  a  bit  of  brandy. 


8  PISTOLS     FOR     TWO 

He  once  told  me  that  he  had  no  use  for  a  woman  who 
wasn't  sad  at  twilight. 

He  has  two  male  companions  —  so  many  and  no  more: 
Mencken  and  John  D.  Williams,  the  theatrical  producer. 
He  is  rarely  seen  with  any  other. 

He  was  born,  as  the  expression  has  it,  with  a  gold  spoon 
in  his  mouth.  He  has  never  had  to  work  for  a  living. 

He  works  daily  from  10  A.M.  until  5  P.M.  He  plays 
from  5 :30  until  8 :30.  Evenings,  he  spends  in  the  theater. 
After  the  theater,  he  has  supper.  He  retires  anywhere 
from  11  P.M.  to  3  A.M. 

He  has  made  many  trips  abroad  and  has  lived  at  dif 
ferent  times  in  France,  England,  Germany,  Italy,  Austria, 
the  Argentine,  India,  Japan  and  Algiers. 

He  fell  in  love  at  first  sight  in  1913  with  a  flower  girl 
in  the  Luitpold  Cafe"  in  Munich,  but  the  hussy  was 
distant. 

He  would  rather  have  Lord  Dunsany  in  The  Smart 
Set  once  than  William  Dean  Howells  a  hundred  times. 

He  often  writes  sentences  so  involved  that  he  con 
fesses  he  himself  doesn't  know  what  they  mean. 

He  admires  Max  Beerbohm,  Conrad,  Dr.  Llewellys 
Barker,  Mozart,  the  Fifth  and  Ninth  Symphonies  and 
the  songs  in  "Oh,  Boy/'  sardines,  ravioli,  Havelock  Ellis 
chocolate  cake,  Molnar,  Hauptmann,  Royalton  cigars, 
Anatole  France,  Simplicissimus,  E.  W.  Howe's  Monthly, 
an  eiderdown  blanket  and  a  hard  pillow,  a  thick- 
toothed  comb  and  stiff  brush,  Schnitzler,  bitter  almond 
soap,  George  Ade,  Richard  Strauss,  Pilsner,  Huneker, 
Florenz  Ziegfeld,  Edwin  Lefevre's  story  "Without  End," 
the  quartette  in  the  Piccadilly  in  London,  the  Cafe  Viel 
in  Paris,  the  overcoat  shop  in  the  Stefansplatz  in  Vienna, 
the  strawberries  in  the  Palais  de  Danse  in  Berlin. 

He  believes,  politically,  in  an  autocracy  of  the  elect, 
for  the  elect,  and  by  the  elect. . . .  His  father  was  a 
Democrat. 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO 


He  has  written  one  play,  "The  Eternal  Mystery," 
which  was  produced  on  the  Continent  in  1914  and  in 
America  in  1915.  He  has  forbidden  the  production  of 
the  play  henceforth  in  any  American  city  save  Chicago, 
in  which  city  anyone  who  chooses  may  perform  it  with 
out  payment  of  royalties. 

In  1904  he  won  the  Amsler  gold  medal  for  proficiency 
with  the  foils.  He  studied  fencing  under  Lieutenant 
Philip  Brigandi,  of  the  Italian  cavalry,  and  Captain 
Albert  Androux,  the  celebrated  French  master  of  foils. 

Fifteen  minutes  in  the  sun  gives  his  complexion  the 
shade  of  mahogany;  twenty  minutes,  the  shade  of  Booker 
T.  Washington. 

He  wears  the  lightest  weight  underwear  through  the 
coldest  winter. 

He  owns  thirty-eight  overcoats  of  all  sorts  and  de 
scriptions.  Overcoats  are  a  fad  with  him.  He  has  them 
from  heavy  Russian  fur  to  the  flimsiest  homespun.  .  .  . 
He  owns  one  with  an  alpine  hood  attachment. 

He  belongs  to  several  metropolitan  clubs,  but  never 
enters  them. 

He  has  never  been  in  jail.  He  has  been  arrested  but  once : 
at  the  age  of  twenty  for  beating  up  a  street-car  conductor. 

He  always  has  his  jackets  made  with  two  breast  pockets: 
one  for  his  handkerchief,  the  other  for  his  reading  glasses. 
The  latter  are  of  the  horn  species. 

His  telephone  operator,  at  his  apartment,  has  a  list 
of  five  persons  to  whom  he  will  talk  —  so  many  and  no 
more.  He  refuses  to  answer  the  telephone  before  five 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

His  favorite  places  of  eating  in  New  York  are  the 
Cafe  des  Beaux  Arts,  the  Kloster  Glocke,  and  the  Japanese 
Garden  in  the  Ritz. 

He  can  down  several  hundred  olives  at  a  single  sitting. 

He  knows  more  about  the  modern  foreign  theater 
than  any  other  American. 


10  PISTOLSFORTWO 

He  is  a  lineal  descendant  of  Petofi  Sandor,  the  national 
poet  of  Hungary,  and  of  Thomas  Bourgchier,  arch 
bishop  of  Canterbury. 

An  examination  of  his  blood,  on  July  1,  1917,  showed: 
Hb.,  Ill  %;  W.  B.  C.,  8,  175.  A  phthalein  test  showed: 
1st  hr.,  50%,  2d  hr.,  20%;  total,  70%.  Blood  pressure: 
129/77.  Gastric  analysis:  Free  HC1,  11.5%;  combined, 
20  %.  No  stasis.  No  lactic  acid. 

He  entered  the  New  York  Public  Library  for  the  first 
time  on  March  7,  1917,  being  taken  there  by  A.  Toxen 
Worm,  of  Copenhagen. 

He  never  accepts  a  dinner  invitation  until  invited 
three  separate  times,  and  then  usually  sends  his  regrets 
at  the  last  moment. 

The  living  Americans  who  most  interest  him  are 
Josephus  Daniels  and  Frank  A.  Munsey. 

The  only  poet  that  he  admires  is  John  McClure.  He  sel 
dom  reads  poetry.  He  has  never  read  "Paradise  Lost." 

He  never  visits  a  house  a  second  time  in  which  he  has 
encountered  dogs,  cats,  children,  automatic  pianos, 
grace  before  or  after  meals,  women  authors,  actors, 
The  New  Republic,  or  prints  of  the  Mona  Lisa. 

He  is  not  acquainted  with  a  single  clergyman,  Con 
gressman,  general,  or  reformer.  He  has  never  met  any 
of  the  Vice-Presidents  of  the  United  States. 

He  is  free  of  adenoids. 

His  knee  jerks  are  normal. 

He  has  never  been  inside  a  church. 

He  has  been  writing  dramatic  criticism  for  thirteen 
successive  years,  and  in  that  time  has  seen  more  than 
3000  plays  in  America,  400  in  England,  and  1900  on 
the  Continent.  He  has  simultaneously  syndicated  criti 
cal  articles  to  as  many  as  forty-two  newspapers,  and  has 
served  as  dramatic  critic  to  seven  metropolitan  magazines. 

In  1910,  on  a  wager,  he  wrote  sixteen  magazine  articles 
in  a  single  month. 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  11 

Among  his  short  stories  are  "D.  S.  W.,"  "Nothing 
to  Declare,"  "But  I  Love  Her,"  "The  Soul  Song,"  "The 
Triple  Expense,"  etc. 

Among  his  most  widely  quoted  retorts  is  that  made  by 
him  to  the  newspaper  interviewer  who  asked  him  if  it 
was  true  that  a  disgruntled  theatrical  manager  named 
Gest  had  alluded  to  him  as  a  "  pinhead."  " That,"  replied 
Nathan,  "is  on  the  face  of  it  absurd.  *  Pinhead'  is  a 
word  of  two  syllables." 

He  once  observed  that  t)ie  reason  the  galleries  of  our 
theaters,  as  our  theatrical  managers  lament,  are  no 
longer  filled  with  newsboys  is  that  all  the  newsboys  are 
now  theatrical  managers. 

He  wrote  the  introduction  to  Eleanor  Gates'  play, 
"The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl." 

He  is  the  first  American  critic  to  have  written  of  the 
dramatists  Molnar,  Brighouse,  and  Bracco. 

His  mother's  family  were  the  pioneer  settlers  of  Fort 
Wayne,  Indiana.  His  father's  family  were  figures  in  the 
continental  world  of  letters.  His  father  spoke  eleven 
languages,  including  the  Chinese. 

He  frequently  spends  an  entire  afternoon  polishing 
up  a  sentence  in  one  of  his  compositions.  And  he 
often  stops  writing  for  a  couple  of  days,  or  as  long  as 
it  takes  him,  to  hit  upon  an  appropriate  adjective  or 
phrase. 

He  never  writes  love  letters,  and  seldom  reads  them. 

He  cannot  operate  a  motor  car,  or  cook  anything,  or 
wind  a  dynamo,  or  fix  a  clock,  or  guess  the  answer  to 
a  riddle,  or  milk  a  cow. 

He  regards  camping  out  as  the  most  terrible  diversion 
ever  invented  by  man. 

He  knows  nothing  of  country  life,  and  cannot  tell  a 
wheat  field  from  a  potato  patch.  He  regards  all  decidu 
ous  trees  as  oaks,  and  all  evergreens  as  cedars. 

He  has  yet  to  drink  his  first  glass  of  Hires'  Root  Beer. 


12  PISTOLS    FOR    TWO 

He  regards  Al  Woods  as  the  most  competent  commercial 
manager  in  the  American  theater. 

His  library  contains  every  known  book  on  the  drama 
published  in  the  English,  French,  German,  and  Italian 
languages. 

He  owns  many  of  the  original  Dunsany  manuscripts. 

Accused  by  certain  of  his  critics  of  a  flippant  attitude 
toward  the  drama,  he  in  reality  takes  the  drama  very 
seriously.  The  theater,  on  the  other  hand,  he  regards 
four  out  of  five  times  as  a  joke. 

He  concurs  in  the  Walpole  philosophy  that  life  is  a 
tragedy  to  him  who  feels  and  a  comedy  to  him  who 
thinks. 

He  is  a  good  listener.  His  invariable  practice  with 
talkers  is  to  let  the  latter  talk  themselves  out  and  then, 
after  a  moment's  studious  silence,  to  nod  his  head  and 
say  yes.  He  never  argues,  never  disagrees,  no  matter 
how  bizarre  the  conversationalist's  pronunciamentos. 

The  Paris  journal,  Le  Temps,  frequently  translates  his 
critical  articles  and  quotes  from  them  copiously. 

He  owns  an  autographed  photograph  of  the  Russian 
mystic,  Rasputin,  presented  to  him  by  the  latter  six 
years  ago. 

He  dislikes  all  forms  of  publicity.  He  has  an  aversion 
to  self-advertisement  that  amounts  almost  to  a  mania. 
He  believes,  with  Mencken,  that  whom  the  gods  would 
destroy,  they  first  make  popular. 

He  takes  a  companion  with  him  to  the  theater  only  on 
rare  occasions.  He  uses  the  extra  seat  sent  him  by  the 
managers  as  a  depository  for  his  hat  and  overcoat. 

He  always  has  thirty  or  forty  lead  pencils  beside  him 
when  he  writes.  The  moment  one  becomes  a  trifle  dull 
he  picks  up  another.  He  cannot  sharpen  the  pencils 
well  enough  to  suit  himself  and  has  the  job  done  by  his 
secretary. 

He  hasn't  the  slightest  intention  of  ever  getting  married. 


PISTOLSFORTWO  13 

He  believes  that  the  motor  trip  from  Watkins  Glen 
to  Elmira,  in  New  York  State,  is  the  most  beautiful  in 
America. 

Among  the  Presidents  of  the  United  States  he  admires 
most  —  and  by  long  odds  —  the  late  Grover  Cleveland. 

He  believes  the  dirtiest  spot  in  the  world  to  be  the 
Azores. 

He  believes  Shaw's  "Caesar  and  Cleopatra"  to  be  the 
best  modern  British  play,  Brieux's  "Les  Hannetons" 
the  best  modern  French  play,  and  Dunsany's  "Gods  of 
the  Mountain"  the  best  modern  Irish  play. 

He  gets  squiffed  about  once  in  six  weeks,  usually  in 
company  with  John  Williams.  He  has  a  headache  the 
next  day. 

He  carries  a  tube  of  menthol  in  his  pocket  and  sniffs 
at  it  forty  times  a  day. 

He  has  been  writing  his  monthly  article  for  The  Smart 
Set  since  1909.  He  and  Mencken  became  editors  of 
the  magazine  in  August,  1914. 

He  began  his  career  as  a  man  of  letters  by  reporting 
for  the  New  York  Herald.  He  reads  the  Times  and 
Globe  daily. 

Among  his  critical  contemporaries  in  New  York  he 
has  the  highest  respect  for  Louis  Sherwin.  Of  American 
dramatists  he  most  admires  Avery  Hopwood.  Of 
American  dramatic  critics  his  vote  is  probably  for  Henry 
T.  Parker,  of  the  Boston  Transcript. 

In  his  own  opinion,  the  best  thing  he  has  ever  written 
is  "The  Eternal  Mystery." 

He  has  never  been  to  Washington,  nor  to  California, 
nor  to  Boston. 

He  has  never  made  a  speech,  nor  delivered  a  lecture, 
nor  sat  on  a  committee.  He  has  never  subscribed  to  a 
charity  fund. 

He  wears  a  No.  14|  collar  and  No.  7^  hat.  His  fav 
orite  soup  is  Creme  de  Sante. 


14  PISTOLSFORTWO 

The  only  author  he  ever  invites  to  his  office  is  Harry 
Kemp.  He  detests  Kemp's  poetry. 

The  temperature  of  his  daily  bath  is  67  degrees. 

A  practitioner  of  preciosity  in  style,  he  nevertheless 
dictates  business  and  social  letters  in  a  "would  say" 
manner,  and  has  his  secretary  sign  them. 

In  1900  he  fought  a  duel  with  pistols  outside  of 
Florence,  Italy,  and  was  wounded  in  the  left  shoulder. 
He  is  still  a  trifle  lame  from  the  wound. 

Returning  to  America  in  1912  on  the  Philadelphia, 
during  a  rough  passage  he  was  the  only  passenger  on 
the  ship  to  appear  in  the  dining  saloon  for  four  successive 
days.  With  three  of  the  stewards,  he  passed  the  time 
by  improvising  a  bowling  alley  in  the  saloon,  utilizing 
mutton  .chops  for  the  pins  and  oranges  for  the  balls.  The 
latter  were  automatically  returned  to  the  bowlers  by 
the  ship's  periodical  pitch  backward. 

He  has  had  the  same  barber  for  fourteen  years.  Curi 
ously  enough,  the  barber's  name  is  George  J.  Nath. 

His  valet's  name  is  Osuka  F.  Takami.  The  latter  has 
a  penchant  for  polishing  Nathan's  patent  leather  boots 
with  the  sofa  pillows. 

He  has  seen  only  one  vaudeville  show  in  the  last  eight 
years. 

He  believes  that  Herma  Prach  is  the  prettiest  girl  on 
the  Viennese  stage  and  Gladys  Gaynor  the  prettiest  on 
the  London  stage.  He  has  never  seen  a  pretty  girl  on 
either  the  Berlin  or  Paris  stage. 

His  headquarters  in  London  is  the  Savoy;  in  Berlin, 
the  Adlon;  '111  Vienna,  the  Grand;  in  Paris,  the  Astra. 

He  has  never  eaten  a  pickled  eel,  calf's  brains,  chicken 
livers,  or  tongue. 

He  has  never  been  in  a  Childs'  restaurant  or  in  Rector's. 

He  is  of  a  nervous  temperament  and  the  slightest 
sound  during  the  night  wakes  him  up. 

He  looks  seven  years  younger  than  he  is. 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  15 

He  has  been  shot  at  three  times  in  America,  but  never 
hit. 

He  likes  chop  suey,  spaghetti,  French  pastry,  horse 
radish  sauce,  Welsh  rarebits,  oysters  a  la  Dumas,  raw 
tomatoes,  stuffed  baked  potatoes,  green  peppers,  broiled 
lobster,  halibut,  mushrooms  cooked  with  caraway  seeds, 
and  chipped  beef. 

His  favorite  American  city  is  Philadelphia.  His 
favorite  French,  Barbizon.  His  favorite  German, 
Munich.  His  favorite  English,  Leeds. 

He  covered  murder  trials  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
for  the  New  York  flerald  during  the  years  of  his  prepara 
tion  for  dramatic  criticism. 

He  wears  tan  pongee  silk  shirts  in  summer. 

The  New  Yorkers  he  admires  most  are  W.  R.  Hearst, 
Arthur  Hopkins,  and  M.  Alevy,  the  eminent  maitre  d1  hotel 
of  the  Cafe  des  Beaux  Arts. 

He  is  the  only  American  dramatic  critic  who  has  never 
succumbed  to  the  Augustus  Thomas,  Granville  Barker 
or  Belasco  rumble-bumble. 

He  is  entirely  ignorant  of  mathematics,  geology, 
botany,  and  physics.  Like  Mencken,  however,  he  is  a 
good  speller,  and  is  privy  to  the  intricacies  of  punctuation. 

The  name  of  the  girl  who  manicures  his  nails  is  Miss 
Priscilla  Brown.  She  is  an  orphan. 

The  claret  he  commonly  serves  to  his  guests  costs 
eighty-five  cents  a  gallon,  in  quarts.  He  buys  the  labels 
separately. 

His  favorite  hospitals  are  the  Johns  Hopkins,  in  Bal 
timore,  and  Galen  Hall,  in  Atlantic  City.  Whenever  he 
is  ill  he  goes  to  one  or  the  other. 

Since  1901  he  has  loved  seventeen  different  girls,  and 
still  remembers  the  names  of  all  of  them,  and  their  prefer 
ences  in  literature,  food,  and  wines.  Of  the  seventeen, 
fourteen  are  happily  married,  one  has  been  married  and 
divorced,  and  the  rest  have  gone  West. 


16  PISTOLSFORTWO 

He  owns  three  watches,  seventeen  scarf-pins,  and 
nineteen  pairs  of  shoes. 

His  skull  is  sub-brachycephalic,  with  a  cephalic  index 
of  83.1.  His  cranial  capacity,  by  the  system  of  Deniker, 
is  1756  cc.  His  nose  is  mesorhinian,  and  his  nasal  index 
is  46.2.  The  ratio  between  the  length  of  his  radius  and 
that  of  his  humerus  is  as  73  is  to  100. 

By  the  Binet-Simon  test  his  general  intelligence  is 
that  of  a  man  of  117  years. 

His  voice  is  a  baritone,  with  a  range  of  one  octave 
and  two  tones. 

He  never  answers  questions  put  to  him  in  letters. 

A  friend  presented  him  several  years  ago  with  a  set 
of  0.  Henry,  which,  try  as  he  will,  he  can't  get  rid  of. 

He  would  rather  eat  a  salt-sprinkled  raw  tomato  still  hot 
from  the  sun  than  a  dinner  from  the  hand  of  a  French  chef. 

He  has  everything  he  wears  made  to  his  order,  save 
his  belts  and  his  socks.  He  never  buys  even  a  hat  that 
is  ready-made. 

He  has  written  under  the  pseudonyms  of  George  Naret, 
Rupert  Cross,  and  William  Drayham. 

He  has  been  denounced  in  the  New  York  newspapers, 
during  his  career  as  dramatic  critic,  by  three  playwrights, 
five  theatrical  managers,  eight  actresses,  twenty-two 
actors,  and  almost  everyone  connected  with  vaudeville. 

He  likes  garlic,  but  refrains  from  eating  it. 

He  has  read  Max  Beerbohm's  " Happy  Hypocrite" 
thirteen  times. 

Like  Mencken,  he  is  subject  to  periodic  attacks  of 
melancholia. 

He  has  visited  every  American  resort  north  of  Old 
Point  Comfort  —  and  thinks  them  all  pretty  bad. 

He  believes  the  Ritz,  in  Philadelphia,  to  be  the  best 
hotel  in  America. 

He  believes  the  Hudson  Theater,  in  New  York,  to  be 
the  most  comfortable  theater  in  America. 


PISTOLSFORTWO  17 

Several  years  ago,  seeking  isolation  in  which  to  finish 
a  piece  of  work,  he  decided  to  shut  his  eyes,  run  his 
finger  down  a  New  York  Central  time-table,  and  go 
to  the  place  opposite  the  name  of  which  his  finger 
would  come  to  a  halt.  His  finger  stopped  opposite 
an  exotic  something  named  New  Paltz.  .  .  .  The  first 
person  he  saw  when  he  got  off  at  the  New  Paltz  sta 
tion  was  the  man  he  had  roomed  with  in  his  junior  year 
at  college. 

He  has  said  that  "cleverness"  consists  merely  in 
saying  the  wrong  thing  at  the  right  time. 

He  owns  three  suits  of  evening  clothes. 

He  wears  pongee  pajamas. 

His  one-act  play,  "The  Eternal  Mystery,"  which  was 
suppressed  in  New  York  and  Detroit,  created  more  dis 
cussion  than  any  one-act  play  produced  in  America  in 
the  last  dozen  years. 

He  is  kind  to  dogs,  babies,  and  negroes.  He  has  never 
given  a  street  beggar  a  cent. 

Among  his  closest  friends  in  Europe  are  Ballington 
Booth,  Jack  Johnson,  and  M.  Philippe  Cartier,  in  charge 
of  the  malt  department  on  the  Orient  Express. 

His  most  ingenious  piece  of  dramatic  criticism  was 
his  criticism  of  the  writings  of  Augustus  Thomas,  in  which 
he  proved  that  Thomas'  plays  would  be  better  if  they 
were  played  backward. 

His  hair  grows  so  quickly  that  he  has  to  get  a  hair-cut 
every  ten  days. 

His  father's  first  name  was  Charles;  his  middle  name, 
Naret. 

He  likes  hot  weather,  the  hotter  the  better. 

He  believes  the  island  of  Bermuda  to  be  the  most 
beautiful  spot  on  earth.  He  would  like  to  live  there  —  if 
he  couldn't  live  in  Munich. 

He  once  wrote  an  article  on  The  Department  of  the 
Interior  for  Munsey's  Magazine.  He  gave  the  proceeds, 


18  PISTOLSFORTWO 

by  way  of  atonement,  to  the  First  Baptist  Church  of 
Asbury  Park. 

He  knew  Evelyn  Nesbit  when  she  was  a  baby. 

He  believes  that  twelve  per  cent  of  all  reformers  and 
uplifters  are  asses,  and  that  the  rest  are  thieves. 

He  wears  low,  Byronic  collars  and  rather  gaudy  neck 
ties. 

In  philosophy  he  is  a  skeptical  idealist,  believing  that 
the  truth  is  an  illusion  and  that  man  is  a  botch.  He 
has  read  the  works  of  Kant,  Fichte,  and  Locke,  but  can't 
remember  what  was  in  them.  He  regards  Schopenhauer, 
on  the  woman  question,  as  a  sentimentalist  whistling 
in  the  dark. 

His  knowledge  of  economics  is  extensive,  and  he  once 
wrote  a  pamphlet  against  David  Ricardo.  It  has  been 
translated  into  French,  German,  and  Bohemian. 

He  has  never  written  any  poetry  in  English,  but  pub 
lished  a  slim  volume  of  Petrarchan  sonnets  in  Italian 
during  his  student  days  in  Bologna.  The  only  copy  of 
this  book  known  to  exist  is  in  the  library  of  Balliol  College, 
Oxford.  The  author's  own  copy  was  lost  in  the  burning 
of  the  Hotel  de  France  at  Lausanne,  in  the  winter  of 
1903. 

He  is  an  excellent  Latinist  and  has  translated  Albius 
Tibullus. 

His  favorite  opera  is  Gluck's  "Iphigenie  in  Tauris." 
He  once  traveled  from  Nice  to  Dresden  to  hear  it.  His 
chief  abomination  in  the  opera  house  is  "The  Jewels  of 
the  Madonna." 

While  on  the  staff  of  the  New  York  Herald,  James 
Gordon  Bennett  offered  him  the  post  of  London  cor 
respondent.  The  emolument  proposed,  however,  made 
Nathan  laugh. 

He  owns  three  top  hats,  fourteen  walking  sticks,  and 
two  Russian  wolf-hounds. 

He  writes  with  a  Mikado  No.  1  lead-pencil. 


PISTOLSFORTWO  19 

He  is  on  good  terms  with  but  two  members  of  his 
family. 

He  reads,  on  the  average,  one  hundred  and  fifty  foreign 
plays  every  year. 

He  has  read  every  book  on  the  drama  published  in 
America,  England,  France,  and  Germany  since  1899. 

He  uses  Calox  tooth  powder,  Colgate's  shaving  soap, 
a  double  strength  witch  hazel,  a  Gillette  razor,  and  Kit- 
chelTs  Horse  Liniment.  He  has  never  taken  quinine, 
Peruna,  Piso's  Cough  Syrup,  Sanatogen,  asperin,  mor 
phine,  opium,  or  castor  oil  —  but  he  has  taken  everything 
else. 

He  believes  Mencken  eats  too  much. 

He  has  been  inoculated  against  typhoid. 

He  once,  as  a  boy,  ran  a  railroad  locomotive  from 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  to  Chagrin  Falls,  Ohio,  killing  only 
two  cows. 

He  gets  a  cinder  in  his  eye  on  an  average  of  twice  a 
day. 

He  can  drink  anything  but  sweet  cordials. 

With  his  meals,  he  uses  Cross  and  Blackwell's  chow- 
chow. 

In  his  undergraduate  days  he  was  an  editor  of  all  the 
Cornell  University  papers. 

He  wrote  articles  on  the  theater  for  the  old  Harper  s 
Weekly  for  four  years. 

He  knows  three  jockeys,  eight  bartenders,  one  mur 
derer,  two  sea  captains,  three  policemen,  one  letter 
carrier,  and  one  politician. 

He  is  a  warm  friend  of  Detective  William  J.  Burns. 

He  likes  buttermilk. 

Christmas  costs  him,  on  the  average,  about  a  thousand 
dollars. 

For  the  last  two  years  he  has  received  weekly  anony 
mous  letters  from  some  woman  in  Bridgeport,  Connect 
icut,  who  signs  herself  with  the  initials  "L.  G." 


20  PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 

He  is  writing  the  introduction  to  Arthur  Hopkins' 
new  book  on  the  drama. 

He  has  not  ridden  a  horse  since  May  22,  1908. 

In  October,  1912,  he  and  his  broker  were  wrecked  off 
Barnegat  in  the  latter' s  yacht,  Margo  /,  and  were  rescued 
via  a  breeches  buoy  by  the  Barnegat  life-saving  crew. 

He  never  reads  popular  novels. 

Mr.  Winthrop  Ames  has  invited  him  to  write  a  satirical 
review  for  his  Little  Theater  in  New  York  and  Nathan 
is  planning  to  do  the  thing  during  1918. 

He  eats  two  raw  eggs  a  day  to  put  on  weight. 

When  the  victim  of  a  bad  cold  and  unable  to  smoke, 
he  chews  soft  licorice  candy  while  writing. 

He  believes  that  George  Bickel  is  the  funniest  come 
dian  on  the  American  stage,  that  Arnold  Daly  is  the  best 
actor,  that  Margaret  Illington  is  the  best  actress. 

He  has  never  written  a  thing  that,  upon  rereading 
after  its  appearance  in  print,  didn't  seem  to  him  to  be 
chock  full  of  flaws. 

He  is  lucky  at  games  of  chance,  though  he  seldom 
plays.  In  1912  he  won  $2,000  in  the  Havana  lottery. 

He  owns  six  belts,  one  of  them  presented  to  him  by 
Gabriele  D'Annunzio  and  made  of  wolf  hide. 

He  is  in  favor  of  universal  military  service,  imperialism, 
and  birth-control,  but  is  opposed  to  woman  suffrage, 
the  direct  primary,  and  prohibition. 

His  usual  pulse  is  71  a  minute.  After  drinking  it 
rises  to  85. 

He  keeps  no  books  of  account,  and  does  not  know  his 
exact  income.  As  a  means  of  defense  against  sudden 
calamity  he  keeps  $3000  in  gold  in  a  safe  deposit  vault. 

His  favorite  name  for  girls  is  Helen. 

If  he  could  rechristen  himself,  he  would  choose  the 
given  name  of  John. 

He  pronounces  his  middle  name,  not  in  the  French 
manner,  but  to  rhyme  with  bean. 


PISTOL  S    FOR    TWO  21 

He  is  a  third  cousin  of  Signer  Enrico  Nathan,  the  late 
Socialist  mayor  of  Rome.  His  uncle,  Dr.  limile  Nathan 
van  der  Linde,  privat  docent  in  anthropology  at  Leyden, 
was  killed  by  savages  in  Borneo  in  1889,  while  a  member 
of  the  Oesterling  exploring  expedition. 

He  has  never  visited  the  battlefield  at  Gettysburg. 


H.  L.  MENCKEN 

He  was  born  at  Baltimore  on  Sunday,  September  12, 
1880,  and  was  baptized  in  the  Church  of  England. 

He  was  educated  at  the  Baltimore  Polytechnic,  and 
is  theoretically  competent  to  run  a  steam  engine  or  a 
dynamo,  but  actually  is  quite  incapable  of  doing  either. 

Down  to  the  age  of  fifteen  it  was  his  ambition  to  be  a 
chemist,  and  to  this  day  he  is  full  of  fantastic  chemical 
information  and  fond  of  unloading  it.  At  the  age  of 
fourteen  he  invented  a  means  of  toning  photographic 
silver  prints  with  platinum. 

The  family  business  was  tobacco,  and  he  was  drafted 
for  it  on  leaving  school.  He  became  a  journeyman 
cigar-maker,  and  can  make  excellent  cigars  to  this  day. 
But  when  chemistry  and  business  died  out,  literature 
set  in,  and  he  took  to  journalism. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-three  he  was  city  editor  and  at 
twenty-five  managing  editor  of  the  Baltimore  Herald, 
now  defunct  —  the  youngest  managing  editor  of  a  big 
city  daily  in  the  United  States. 

He  printed  a  book  of  poems  at  twenty-two  —  now  a 
rare  bibelot.  He  was  "discovered,"  as  the  saying  is,  by 
Ellery  Sedgwick,  now  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
but  then  running  Leslie's  Monthly.  He  and  Sedgwick 
have  remained  on  friendly  terms  to  this  day,  but  he 
sometimes  writes  for  the  Atlantic. 

In  1900,  having  read  Lafcadio  Hearn's  "Two  Years 
in  the  French  West  Indies,"  he  shipped  on  a  banana  boat 


22  PISTOLSFORTWO 

for  the  Spanish  Main,  and  has  returned  to  the  West 
Indies  three  times  since. 

He  is  five  feet,  eight  and  a  half  inches  in  height,  and 
weighs  about  185  pounds.  In  1915  he  bulged  up  to  197 
pounds.  Then  he  took  the  Vance  Thompson  cure  and 
reduced  to  175,  rebounding  later. 

The  things  he  dislikes  most  are  Methodists,  college 
professors,  newspaper  editorials  (of  which,  in  his  time, 
he  has  written  more  than  10,000),  Broadway  restaurants, 
reformers,  actors,  children,  magazine  fiction,  dining  out, 
the  New  Freedom,  prohibition,  sex  hygiene,  The  Nation, 
soft  drinks,  women  under  thirty,  the  nonconformist  con 
science,  Socialism,  good  business  men,  the  moral  theory 
of  the  world,  and  the  sort  of  patriotism  that  makes  a 
noise. 

Among  the  men  he  admires  are  Joseph  Conrad,  W.  R. 
Hearst,  E.  W.  Howe,  Richard  Strauss,  Anatole  France, 
and  Erich  LudendorfF  —  this  last  because  he  is  a  great 
general  and  has  never  uttered  a  single  word  of  patriotic 
or  pietistic  cant.  He  likes  Dreiser,  but  does  not  admire 
him. 

His  taste  in  female  beauty  runs  to  a  slim  hussy,  not 
too  young,  with  dark  eyes  and  a  relish  for  wit.  He  abhors 
sentimentality  in  women,  holding  that  it  is  a  masculine 
weakness,  and  unbecoming  the  fair.  He  seldom  falls 
in  love,  and  then  only  momentarily. 

He  wears  buttoned  shoes  because  he  cannot  tie  shoe 
laces.  Neither  can  he  tie  a  dress  tie;  if  there  is  no  one 
to  tie  it  for  him  he  has  to  miss  the  party.  In  general, 
he  is  almost  wholly  devoid  of  manual  dexterity,  though 
he  can  play  the  piano  well  enough  to  entertain  himself, 
and  is  a  good  sight  reader. 

The  only  art  that  ever  stirs  him  is  music.  He  views 
literature  objectively,  almost  anatomically.  He  is  anaes 
thetic  to  painting.  His  favorite  composers  are  Bee 
thoven,  Haydn,  Mozart,  Brahms,  and  Richard  Strauss. 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  23 

He  detests  Tschaikowsky  and  Rossini,  and  likes  Wagner 
better  out  of  the  opera  house  than  in  it.  In  his  youth 
he  wrote  waltzes.  He  abominates  song  and  piano  recitals 
and  oratorios.  He  has  a  pretty  extensive  knowledge  of 
musical  technique,  and  knows  a  sound  sonata  from  a 
bad  one.  When  he  improvises  it  is  usually  in  F  major. 
He  has  a  poor  ear  and  cannot  tune  a  fiddle. 

He  drinks  all  the  known  alcoholic  beverages,  but 
prefers  Pilsner  to  any  other;  a  few  seidels  make  him 
very  talkative.  In  the  absence  of  Pilsner,  he  drinks 
Michelob.  He  seldom  drinks  at  meals  and  often  goes 
three  or  four  days  without  a  drink.  In  wine,  he  likes 
whatever  is  red  and  cheap.  He  detests  champagne, 
Scotch  and  rye  whisky,  and  gin,  though  he  drinks  them 
all  to  be  polite.  He  has  a  good  head,  and  is  not  soused 
more  than  once  a  year,  usually  at  Christmas. 

He  has  good  eyes  and  a  gentle  mouth,  but  his  nose  is 
upset,  his  ears  stick  out  too  much,  and -he  is  shapeless 
and  stoop-shouldered.  One  could  not  imagine  him  in 
the  moving  pictures.  He  has  strong  and  white,  but 
irregular  teeth. 

He  wears  a  No.  7$  hat.  He  is  bow-legged.  He  is  a 
fast  walker.  He  used  to  snore  when  asleep,  but  had  his 
nasal  septum  straightened  by  surgery,  and  does  so  no 
longer. 

He  takes  no  interest  whatever  in  any  sport.  He 
played  baseball  as  a  boy,  but  hasn't  seen  a  game  for  ten 
years,  and  never  looks  at  the  baseball  news  in  the  papers. 
He  cannot  play  tennis  or  golf,  and  has  never  tried.  He 
knows  nothing  of  cards.  He  never  bets  on  elections  or 
horse-races.  He  never  takes  any  exercise  save  walking. 

He  rejects  the  whole  of  Christianity,  including  espe 
cially  its  ethics,  and  does  not  believe  that  the  soul  is  im 
mortal.  His  moral  code  is  from  the  Chinese  and  has 
but  one  item :  keep  your  engagements.  He  pays  all  bills 
immediately,  never  steals  what  he  can  buy,  and  is  never 


24  PISTOLSFORTWO 

late  for  an  appointment.  He  has  missed  but  one  train 
in  his  life. 

He  believes  in  war  so  long  as  it  is  not  for  a  moral  cause. 
He  advocates  universal  military  training  on  the  ground 
that  it  causes  wars. 

His  table  manners  are  based  upon  provincial  French 
principles,  with  modifications  suggested  by  the  Cossacks 
of  the  Don. 

When  at  home  he  arises  at  eight  sharp  every  morning, 
and  is  at  his  desk  at  nine. 

He  likes  to  go  motoring  at  night,  and  often  sets  out 
alone  at  midnight. 

He  takes  a  half  hour's  nap  every  afternoon.  He  can 
sleep  anywhere  and  at  almost  any  time. 

He  has  eleven  uncles  and  aunts  and  eighteen  cousins, 
and  has  never  quarreled  with  any  of  them. 

He  has  been  inoculated  against  typhoid  and  hay  fevers. 

He  is  a  prompt  correspondent,  and  answers  every 
letter  the  day  it  is  received. 

He  keeps  his  watch  on  an  old-fashioned  clothes-press 
in  his  workroom,  and  winds  it  every  time  he  looks  at  it. 

He  detests  windy  days.  As  between  heat  and  cold, 
he  prefers  heat. 

He  never  preserves  love  letters,  and  never  writes  them. 

His  tonsils  have  been  cut  out.  His  Wassermann 
reaction  is  and  always  has  been  negative.  He  has  a  low 
blood  pressure.  His  heart  and  kidneys  are  normal. 

His  favorite  hotel  is  the  Bayrischer  Hof  at  Munich. 
After  that  he  ranks  them  in  the  following  order:  the 
Adlon,  Berlin;  the  Palace,  Madrid;  the  Paladst,  Copen 
hagen;  the  Statler,  Buffalo;  the  Edouard  VII,  Paris. 

He  says  the  best  place  to  eat  in  the  whole  world  is 
at  the  basement  lunch  counter  of  the  Rennert  Hotel, 
Baltimore.  The  best  things  to  order  there  are  oyster 
potpie,  boiled  turkey  with  oyster  sauce,  Virginia  ham 
and  spinach,  and  boiled  tongue. 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  25 

He  owns  ten  suits  of  clothes,  and  wears  them  seriatim. 
All  of  them  are  of  summer  weight.  He  never  wears 
heavy  clothes. 

He  never  wears  patent  leather  shoes,  even  with  dress 
clothes.  He  wears  horn  spectacles  for  reading,  but 
never  otherwise. 

Between  1899  and  1906  he  wrote  and  published  thirty- 
five  short  stories.  Since  1906  he  has  written  none. 

For  five  years  he  contributed  a  daily  article  to  the 
Baltimore  Evening  Sun.  His  total  writings  for  news 
papers  run  to  nearly  10,000,000  words.  He  has  reported 
three  national  conventions  and  nine  executions. 

His  one-act  play,  "The  Artist,"  has  been  translated 
into  German,  Dano-Norwegian,  Italian,  and  Russian. 

He  has  twice  voted  for  Roosevelt,  not  by  conviction, 
but  because  he  believes  Roosevelt  gives  a  better  show 
than  any  other  performer  in  the  ring.  In  politics  he  is 
a  strict  federalist. 

He  advocates  woman  suffrage  on  the  ground  that,  if 
women  voted,  democracy  would  be  reduced  to  an  ab 
surdity  the  sooner. 

He  is  very  polite  to  women,  particularly  if  he  dislikes 
them,  which  is  usually. 

He  owns  the  original  manuscript  of  "Sister  Carrie," 
presented  to  him  by  Dreiser. 

He  is  a  nephew  of  the  late  Right  Rev.  Frederick  Bain- 
ville  Mencken,  bishop  of  Akkad  in  partibus  infidelium. 
This  uncle  was  disinherited  by  his  grandfather  as  a 
result  of  a  family  dispute  over  transubstantiation. 

His  pet  literary  abominations  are  "alright"  (as  one 
word)  and  the  use  of  "near"  as  an  adjective.  He  will 
never  speak  of  or  to  an  author  who  uses  either. 

His  favorite  eating  places  in  New  York  are  Rogers', 
the  Kloster  Glocke,  the  Lafayette,  and  the  Cafe  del 
Pezzo. 

The  cities  he  likes  best  are  Munich,  Chicago,  Baltimore, 


26  PISTOLS    FOR    TWO 

and  London.  He  dislikes  Paris,  Rome,  Berlin,  and 
New  York  —  the  last-named  so  much  that,  whenever 
he  has  any  work  to  do,  he  goes  to  Baltimore  to  do  it. 

He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  the  late  Paul  Armstrong 
for  many  years  and  never  quarreled  with  him. 

In  his  own  opinion,  the  best  thing  he  has  ever  written 
is  "Death:  a  Discussion"  hi  his  "Book  of  Burlesques." 

He  wears  B.  V.  D.'s  all  the  year  round,  and  actually 
takes  a  cold  bath  every  day. 

He  never  has  his  nails  manicured,  but  trims  them  with 
ajacknife. 

Every  Saturday  night  he  spends  the  time  between 
8  and  10  playing  music,  and  the  time  between  10  and  12 
drinking  Michelob.  He  plays  second  piano. 

He  has  received  three  proposals  of  marriage,  but  has 
never  succumbed.  He  has  never  seduced  a  working 
girl.  He  has  no  issue. 

He  works  in  his  shirt-sleeves  and  sleeps  in  striped 
pajamas. 

He  wears  Manhattan  garters,  No.  15J  Belmont  collars, 
and  very  long-tailed  overcoats.  His  plug  hat,  which  he 
wears  but  two  or  three  times  a  year,  has  a  flat  brim,  like 
that  of  a  French  comedian. 

He  is  smooth-faced  and  shaves  every  morning  with  a 
Gillette  safety  razor.  Once,  while  in  Paris,  he  grew  a 
yellow  moustache  and  goatee.  They  lasted,  however, 
but  two  weeks. 

He  has  lived  in  one  house  in  Baltimore  for  34  years. 
In  it  he  has  3000  books. 

He  owns  the  largest  collection  of  Ibseniana  in  the 
world,  including  autographs,  first  editions,  and  other 
rarities.  Part  of  it  is  in  Baltimore,  part  in  Copenhagen, 
part  in  Munich,  and  part  in  Geneva. 

He  reads  German  and  Norwegian  fluently,  French, 
Spanish,  Italian,  and  Latin  less  fluently,  and  makes  shift 
to  sweat  through  the  following:  Russian,  Greek,  Dutch, 


PISTOLSFORTWO  27 

Rumanian,    Serbian,    Czech,    Sanskrit,    Assyrian,    Hun 
garian,  and  Swedish. 

His  favorite  American  poet  is  Lizette  Woodworth 
Reese.  He  and  she  have  lived  in  the  same  city  for  years, 
but  they  have  never  met. 

His  total  receipts  in  royalties  on  his  books,  in  fifteen 
years,  have  been  $172.50. 

His  personal  funds  are  invested  in  bonds  of  the  Penn 
sylvania  Railroad,  the  Midvale  Steel  Company,  and  the 
Danish,  Chilean,  and  Swiss  governments. 

During  his  newspaper  career  he  was  American  corre 
spondent  of  the  Hongkong  Press,  the  Kobe  Chronicle, 
and  the  Colombo  (Ceylon)  Observer. 

One  of  his  fads  is  theology.  He  understands  its  techni 
cal  terminology,  and  is  sometimes  consulted  on  difficult 
points  by  both  Catholic  and  Protestant  clergy. 

Down  to  July  7,  1913,  he  employed  suspenders  to  hold 
up  his  trousers.  Being  then  convinced  by  Nathan  that 
such  appliances  had  a  socialistic  smack,  he  abandoned 
them  for  a  belt. 

He  reads  an  average  of  ten  books  a  week,  in  addition 
to  those  he  goes  through  for  reviewing  purposes.  The 
subjects  he  affects  are  theology,  biology,  economics,  and 
modern  history. 

He  has  never  read  George  Eliot,  or  Jane  Austen,  or 
Bulwer-Lytton.  He  has  never  been  able  to  read  Dostoi- 
evski,  or  Turgeniev,  or  Balzac.  His  favorite  writers,  as 
a  youth,  were  Thackeray,  Huxley,  and  Kipling.  He 
seldom  reads  newspapers.  The  only  magazines  he  ever 
looks  at  are  the  Smart  Set,  Ed  Howe's  Monthly,  the  Coun 
try  Gentleman,  the  Masses,  the  Seven  Arts,  and  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal. 

He  has  a  wide  acquaintance  among  medical  men  and 
knows  a  good  deal  about  modern  medical  problems.  His 
advice  is  often  sought  by  persons  seeking  treatment; 
he  gives  it  copiously. 


28  PISTOLSFORTWO 

He  knows  mathematics  up  to  plane  geometry  and 
trigonometry.  He  knows  philosophy,  chemistry,  and 
history,  but  is  ignorant  of  physics  and  grammar.  He 
can  draw  with  some  skill,  and  was  once  a  good  mechanical 
draftsman.  He  is  an  excellent  speller  and  knows  how 
to  punctuate. 

In  philosophy  he  is  a  strict  mechanist  of  the  Loeb- 
Haeckel  school.  In  psychology  he  leans  toward  Adler. 
He  questions  pragmatism,  but  admits  its  workableness. 
He  is  an  advocate  of  absolute  free  speech  in  all  things  — 
and  exhibits  the  utmost  intolerance  in  combatting  those 
who  oppose  it. 

He  believes  and  argues  that  sex  is  a  vastly  less  po 
tent  influence  in  life  than  the  Puritans  and  psychan- 
alysts  maintain.  He  advocates  the  establishment  of 
lay  monasteries  for  men  who  care  for  neither  God  nor 
women. 

When  he  is  at  home  he  lunches  at  noon  and  dines  at 
six.  He  never  eats  between  meals.  He  never  takes  a 
drink  before  dinner  save  when  on  holiday. 

He  most  often  begins  his  letters  to  men  with  the  salu 
tation  "My  dear  Mon  Chair."  To  women,  "My  dear 
Mon  Chairy." 

A  March  ago,  he  attempted  to  give  up  smoking  and 
sought  to  alleviate  his  longing  for  the  weed  by  sucking 
slippery  elm.  He  was  again  pulling  at  a  stogie  the 
following  month. 

He  has  probably  done  more  for  talented  young  writers 
who  have  tried  in  vain  to  get  a  hearing  with  publishers 
than  any  other  American  critic.  Of  all  those  whom  he 
has  helped  to  obtain  an  hospitable  ear,  only  one  has  ever 
so  much  as  thanked  him. 

He  forgives  anything  in  a  friend  —  theft,  perjury,  or 
stupidity  —  anything  save  hypocrisy.  But  he  has  no 
use  for  loyalty  hi  others.  "Loyalty,"  he  says,  "is  the 
virtue  of  a  dog." 


PISTOLS    FOR     TWO  29 

Tie  pokes  fun  at  modern  musical  comedy,  particularly 
the  music  thereof.  Yet  he  has  never  heard  "Sari"  or 
"The  Purple  Road,"  or  the  best  of  the  last  dozen  scores 
of  Victor  Herbert. 

He  believes,  with  Nathan,  that  the  three  best  stories 
printed  in  The  Smart  Set  under  their  joint  editorial  direc 
tion  have  been  "The  Exiles'  Club,"  by  Dunsany;  "Ashes 
to  Ashes,"  by  James  Gardner  Sanderson;  and  "The  End 
of  lisa  Mentieth,"  by  Lilith  Benda.  He  believes,  like 
Nathan,  that  the  most  charming  sentimental  story 
printed  in  The  Smart  Set  has  been  Lee  Pape's  "Little 
Girl."  lie  believes,  with  Nathan,  that  the  best  epigram 
has  been  that  sent  in  by  an  anonymous  contributor: 
"When  love  dies  there  is  no  funeral.  The  corpse  remains 
in  the  house." 

He  met  Nathan  for  the  first  time  in  the  chateau  of 
the  Comtesse  Helene  de  Firelle  in  the  valley  of  the  Loire, 
on  August  10,  1906.  Three  days  later  they  left  together 
for  a  trip  to  Munich,  to  drink  the  waters. 

One  of  his  best  pieces  of  humor  is  a  pun  on  "  non  compos 
mentis."  I  cannot  print  it. 

A  healthy  man,  he  yet  complains  hourly  of  imaginary 
ailments. 

lie  has  never  seen  Coney  Island. 
When  in  his  cups,  he  imagines  himself  a  proficient 
bass  singer. 

In  the  last  three  years  he  has  been  to  the  theater  but 
once.     On  this  occasion  he  accompanied  Nathan  to  a  piece 
called  "Common  Clay."     He  remained  twenty  minutes. 
He  uses  handkerchiefs  two  feet  wide. 
He  always  fights  with  Nathan  for  the  bar  or  dinner 
check.     His  records  of  victories  is  eight  per  cent. 

Like  Nathan,  he  dislikes  to  talk  about  business  affairs 
or  to  listen  to  anyone  talk  about  business  affairs.  Both 
he  and  Nathan  leave  their  finances  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  their  competent  partner,  E.  F.  Warner. 


30  PISTOLSFORTWO 

He  and  Nathan  plan  some  day  to  collaborate  on  a 
satirical  farce  with  scenes  laid  in  a  Turkish  harem. 

In  conversation  he  is  given  to  an  immoderate  employ 
ment  of  the  word  "bemuse." 

He  believes  the  following  to  be  his  best  epigram:  "An 
anti-vivisectionist  is  one  who  gags  at  a  guinea  pig  and 
swallows  a  baby."  To  the  contrary,  I  believe  his  best 
to  be:  "The  charm  of  a  man  is  measured  by  the  charm 
of  the  women  who  think  that  he  is  a  scoundrel." 

He  wrote  dramatic  criticisms  in  Baltimore  for  four 
years.  At  the  end  of  that  period,  unable  longer  to  bear 
the  idiocies  of  the  local  theaters,  he  inserted  a  $200  half- 
page  advertisement  in  each  of  the  Baltimore  newspapers 
to  the  effect  that  he  would  cause  the  arrest  of  the  next 
manager  who  sent  him  tickets. 

He  loves  cocoanut  pie. 

He  smokes  cigarettes  only  on  rare  occasions.  He  is 
not  used  to  them  and,  on  such  occasions,  holds  the  cigarette 
gingerly,  as  if  it  were  going  to  bite  him. 

Present  at  a  mixed  conversation,  he  frequently  dozes 
off  to  sleep. 

When  in  New  York,  every  night  before  retiring  he 
eats  a  dozen  large  clams. 

He  never  drinks  beer  save  in  seidels. 

He  has  been  to  the  Horse  Show  but  once.  On  this 
occasion  he  remained  three  minutes. 

He  does  not  dance. 

In  Paris,  in  1913,  he  hailed  Nathan  on  the  latter's 
way  to  Southampton  with  this  wireless:  "Get  off  Cher 
bourg  and  come  direct  Paris.  Have  discovered  place 
where  they  have  good  beer." 

He  is  unable  to  sit  at  table  upon  finishing  dinner.  With 
the  arrival  of  the  finger-bowl  he  is  off  for  a  walk. 

He  is,  at  bottom,  a  sentimentalist.  True,  he  has  no 
use  for  such  things  as  babies,  love  stories  (however  good), 
or  the  Champs  filysees  in  the  springtime  (once  while 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  31 

walking  up  the  boulevard  with  Nathan  he  deplored  the 
absence  on  it  of  a  first-class  drugstore),  yet  he  succumbs 
moistly  to  Julia  Sanderson  singing,  "They  Wouldn't 
Believe  Me,"  to  a  cemetery  in  the  early  green  of  May,  to 
the  lachrymose  waltz  from  "Eva,"  which  he  plays  upon 
the  piano  in  a  melancholious  pianissimo,  and  to  any  poem 
about  a  dog  (however  bad). 

His  trousers  are  never  creased.  His  clothes  are  always 
of  a  navy  blue  shade.  He  never  wears  a  waistcoat. 
He  buys  the  best  cravats  that  can  be  obtained  for  fifty 
cents. 

He  loves  liqueurs,  preferably  creme  de  cacao.  They 
always  make  him  feel  badly  the  next  morning. 

He  has  written  the  following  books:  "A  Book  of 
Prefaces,"  "A  Little  Book  in  C  Major,"  "A  Book  of 
Burlesques,"  "The  Battle  of  the  Wilhelmstrasse,"  "The 
Artist,"  "The  Gist  of  Nietzsche,"  "The  Philosophy  of 
Friedrich  Nietzsche,"  "Europe  after  8:15"  (in  collabora 
tion  with  Nathan  and  Wright),  "Men  vs.  the  Man"  (in 
collaboration  with  R.  R.  La  Monte),  and  "  George  Bernard 
Shaw:  His  Plays."  The  latter  was  the  first  book  on 
Shaw  ever  published. 

He  eats  and  enjoys  all  varieties  of  human  food.  There 
is  no  dish  that  he  doesn't  eat.  He  has  eaten  snails, 
frogs,  eels,  octopus,  catfish,  goat  meat,  and  Norwegian 
cheese.  He  thinks  that  the  best  roasts  are  the  English, 
the  best  table  wines  the  Spanish,  the  best  pastry  the 
Danish,  the  best  soups  the  German,  and  the  best  cooking 
the  French. 

He  has  visited  the  following  countries:  England, 
Holland,  Norway,  Denmark,  Italy,  Germany,  Austria, 
Russia,  Spain,  France,  Switzerland,  and  Cuba.  He  has 
never  been  in  Canada  or  Mexico,  and  has  never  been 
further  West  than  St.  Louis. 

He  has  been  under  rifle  and  shell  fire  in  this  war,  on 
the  eastern  front,  and  was  glad  to  get  under  cover.  He 


32  PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 

has  boon  in  Franco,  Germany,  and  Russia  during  the  war. 
He  was  nowhere  misiakon  for  a  spy,  and  was  always 
troatod  courteously.  He  says  that  9()  per  cent  of  the 
authors  of  war  books  are  liars. 

His  family  is  well-to-do,  and  he  has  never  boon  doad 
broke. 

He  has  never  soon  a  moving  picture  show. 

He  is  opposed  to  vice  crusades,  holding  that  the  average 
prostitute  is  decentor  than  the  average  reformer.  He 
ascribes  the  crusading  spirit,  following  Freud,  to  a  sup 
pressed  and  pathological  sexuality. 

He  wears  (and  owns)  no  jewelry  whatever,  not  even 
a  scarfpin,  but  lie  sports  a  formidable  Swiss  watch,  with 
a  split  second  hand  and  a  bell  that  strikes  the  quarter 
hours.  He  never  wears  gloves  save  in  intensely  cold 
weather. 

He  owns  and  drives  a  1916  Studebakor  car,  and  never 
has  it  washed. 

Once,  on  receiving  an  amorous  billet  doux  from  a  fair 
admirer,  he  sent  it  back  to  the  writer  with  a  Smart  Set 
rejection  slip. 

He  frequently  carries  on  a  perfectly  innocent  con 
versation  with  Nathan  in  a  low  stage  whisper,  thus 
lending  to  his  most  trivial  remarks  a  secret  and  sinister 
import. 

He  introduced  the  new  widespread  use  of  "jitney"  as 
an  adjective.  He  also  coined  the  words  "  smuthound"  and 
"snouter,"  both  designating  a  "malignant  moralist'*  — 
another  of  his  invention. 

While  playing  the  piano,  he  keeps  the  loud  pedal  glued 
to  the  floor  from  convert  to  coda. 

He  and  Nathan,  in  all  the  years  of  their  friendship, 
have  quarreled  but  once.  This  was  in  the  late  summer 
of  1916,  when  Mencken  was  suffering  from  a  violent 
attack  of  hay  fever  and  insisted  upon  going  to  bed  one 
night  at  eleven  o'clock,  thus  leaving  the  disgusted  Nathan 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  33 

to  kill  time  as  best  he  could  until  midnight,  at  that  period 
his  hour  for  retiring. 

He  never  wears  rubbers,  carries  an  umbrella,  or  wears 
a  mackintosh.    He  likes  to  walk  in  the  rain  and  get  wet. 
He  alludes  to  all  actors  as  "cabots."    For  the  plural 
of  "genius"  he  uses  "genii." 

He  travels  with  a  suitcase  large  enough  to  transport 
a  circus. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-nine  he  was  invited  to  join  the 
Elks.  .  .  .    The  judge,  a  friend  of  his,  reduced  the  charge 
from  "  assault  with  intent  to  kill "  to  "  assault  and  battery." 
He  has  never  had  typhoid  fever,  smallpox,  cholera, 
scarlet  fever,  arthritis,  appendicitis,  or  delirium  tremens. 
He  has  never  had  a  headache.    He  can  digest  anything. 
He  has  been  involved,  in  his  time,  in  eight  lawsuits, 
and  has  won  them  all,  chiefly  by  perjury. 

His  first  name  is  Henry;  his  middle  name,  Louis.  He 
never  spells  them  out,  signing  himself  always  simply 
H.  L. 

He  drinks  a  brand  of  cheap  claret  which  he  lays  in 
in  shipments  of  ten  cases. 

He  has  presented  the  steward  of  the  Florestan  Club, 
of  Baltimore,  with  a  bronze  medal  for  reviving  Maryland 
hoe  cake. 

A  life-long  opponent  of  Puritanism  in  all  its  forms,  he 
is  on  good  personal  terms  with  many  Puritan  reformers, 
and  always  reads  the  tracts  they  send  to  him. 

He  has  been  arrested  four  times,  once  in  Paris,  once  in 
Copenhagen,  and  twice  in  America.  He  was  acquitted 
each  time,  though  guilty. 

He  complains  ceaselessly  over  what  it  costs  him  to  live. 
Yet  he  is  a  liberal  fellow  and  keeps  Nathan  supplied 
with  cigars.  The  cigars,  however,  are  not  to  Nathan's 
taste. 

He  is  an  omnivorous  borrower  of  matches. 
He  washes  his  hands  twenty-four  times  a  day. 


34  PISTOLSFORTWO 

He  writes  directly  upon  the  typewriter,  never  long 
hand.  He  signs  all  his  letters  with  the  episcopal  "Yours 
in  Xt." 

For  the  last  four  years  he  and  Nathan  have  been 
planning  a  motor  trip  through  Virginia.  They  will 
never  make  it,  both  agree  emphatically. 

His  favorite  dish  is  anything  a  la  Creole. 

He  once  brought  from  abroad,  as  a  gift  to  his  negro 
cook,  three  dozen  strings  of  Venetian  beads.  She  is  a 
strict  Baptist  and  declined  to  wear  them. 

His  favorite  novel  is  "Huckleberry  Finn";  his  favorite 
name  for  a  woman,  Maggie. 

He  often  goes  without  breakfast,  and  never  eats  more 
than  an  apple  and  a  slice  of  dry  bread. 

He  and  Nathan  have  their  secretaries  in  The  Smart 
Set  offices  keep  a  list  of  forty-two  bad  writers.  Opposite 
the  name  of  each  of  the  forty-two  is  the  fine  one  must 
pay  the  other  if  the  name  is  uttered  by  either. 

He  slicks  his  hair  down  like  the  actor  who  plays  the 
heroic  lieutenant  in  the  military  dramas. 

He  likes  to  ride  down  Fifth  Avenue  in  a  victoria. 

He  owns  a  plaid  shirt.    He  wears  it. 

He  has  worn  the  same  straw  hat  for  five  years.  He 
cleans  it  every  spring  with  a  tooth-brush  dipped  in 
bicarbonate  of  soda  and  Pebeco  tooth  paste.  Each 
spring  he  buys  a  new  tooth-brush. 

He  writes  in  a  bare  room.  There  is  no  carpet  or 
rug  on  the  floor.  The  only  pictures  on  the  wall 
are  portraits  of  his  great-great-grandfather,  Ibsen, 
Conrad,  Marcella  Allonby,  Mark  Twain,  and  Johannes 
Brahms. 

He  sleeps  on  a  sleeping  porch  adjoining  his  office.  He 
uses,  as  a  blanket,  a  Persian  shawl  presented  to  him  by 
the  late  Lafcadio  Hearn. 

He  has  read  9872  bad  novels  during  his  active  life 
as  a  literary  critic. 


PISTOLSFORTWO  35 

He  is  an  artist  of  no  mean  ability.  His  portrait  of 
Nathan,  reproduced  in  the  Chicago  Daily  News  in  May, 
1917,  attracted  wide  attention  and,  among  other  things, 
brought  him  requests  for  sittings  from  Hamlin  Garland, 
William  Lyon  Phelps,  and  Robert  B.  Mantell. 

He  clips  the  ends  off  his  cigars  with  his  side  teeth. 

He  has  written  under  the  pseudonyms  of  William  R. 
Fink,  William  Drayham,  John  F.  Brownell,  Harriet 
Morgan,  W.  L.  D.  Bell,  Gladys  Jefferson,  and  Baroness 
Julie  Desplaines. 

He  sees  nothing  beautiful  about  the  Hudson  from 
Riverside  Drive,  but  believes  St.  Thomas's  to  be  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  churches  in  the  world. 

He  collects  odd  pieces  of  furniture,  Japanese  wood 
carvings,  and  bad  plaster  of  paris  casts. 

He  knows  two  actors,  George  Fawcett  and  Frank 
Craven. 

He  was  taught  how  to  swim  by  John  Adams  Thayer. 

He  is  the  author  of  a  farce  that  has  played  on  Broadway 
for  one  hundred  nights.  To  this  authorship,  no  one  save 
Nathan,  James  Huneker,  A.  H.  Woods,  and  myself  have 
been  privy. 

His  high-water  marks  in  the  matter  of  malt  bibbing 
are  as  follows:  Pschorrbrau,  Munich,  8  masses  in  two 
hours  and  seven  minutes;  Appenrodt's,  Paris,  9  seidels 
in  one  hour  and  a  quarter;  Luchow's,  New  York,  13 
seidels  and  one  glass  in  one  hour,  twenty-one  minutes 
and  twelve  seconds.  Timers:  Pschorrbrau,  Arthur 
Abbott,  H.  B.  M.  vice-consul;  Appenrodt's,  Pierre 
Disdebaux,  of  Marseilles,  France;  Luchow's,  Theodore 
Dreiser,  of  Warsaw,  Indiana,  U.  S.  A. 

He  was  a  regular  reader  of  the  Boston  Transcript,  the 
New  York  Times,  and  the  Youth's  Companion,  up  to  the 
age  of  ten. 

He  believes  W.  L.  George  to  be  the  best  of  the  younger 
English  novelists. 


36  PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 

His  signature  runs  up  hill. 

He  has  been  cured  of  hay-fever  and  is  at  present  writ 
ing  a  pamphlet  extolling  the  discoverers  of  the  cure. 

He  admires  the  kind  of  Munich  "art"  that  is  sold  in 
the  Fifth  Avenue  shops  at  $4.35  the  picture. 

He  likes  to  look  in  shop  windows.  He  has  never 
ridden  in  a  Ferris  Wheel. 

He  laments  the  fact  that  he  gets  no  exercise  and  con 
templates  fixing  up  a  carpenter  shop  in  the  basement  of 
his  house  in  Baltimore,  so  that  he  may  saw  and  chop 
his  arms  back  into  muscular  shape. 

He  numbers  the  paragraphs  of  his  letters  and  never 
writes  more  than  six  paragraphs. 

The  English  critics  hailed  his  Nietzsche  book  as  the 
best  thing  of  its  sort  that  had  come  out  of  America. 

He  has  never  read  Shakespeare's  "Venus  and  Adonis" 
or  "Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre." 

He  believes  that  all  fat  women  are  sentimental  and 
says  that  the  publisher  who  will  edit  a  magazine  for  this 
clientele  will  make  a  fortune.  Inasmuch  as  magazine 
fiction  heroines  are  at  present  always  slim,  elf-like  crea 
tures,  he  contends  that  the  sentimental  fat  girl  never 
gets  a  fair  chance  to  enjoy  herself,  and  that,  accordingly, 
a  magazine  with  no  heroine  weighing  less  than  one  hundred 
and  ninety  pounds  would  in  one  year  put  Cyrus  K.  Curtis 
in  the  pauper  class. 

Like  Nathan,  he  believes  that  the  theory  that  it  is 
difficult  to  make  money  is  poppycock.  If  one  is  willing 
to  give  the  public  what  it  wants,  anyone  —  argue  these 
two  —  can  get  rich  very  quickly.  To  prove  their  con 
tention,  they  outlined  plans  for  several  cheap  magazines 
three  years  ago,  which,  upon  being  put  into  circulation, 
proved  immediate  and  overwhelming  successes.  Mencken 
and  Nathan,  at  the  end  of  six  months,  sold  their  joint 
interest  for  $100,000.  They  argue  that  the  thing  is 
as  simple  as  rolling  off  a  log,  and  that  any  person  who 


PISTOLS    FOR    TWO  37 

is  interested  in  this  sort  of  thing  may  become  a  Street- 
and-Smith  or  Munsey  overnight. 

At  the  age  of  nineteen,  he  invented  a  slot  machine  for 
the  vending  of  patent  medicines  on  excursion  boats. 

He  has  read  "Huckleberry  Finn"  twenty-seven  times. 
He  reads  the  book  once  a  year,  regularly. 

He  has  never  seen  Mrs.  Castle,  Mary  Garden,  Ann 
Pennington,  Maurice  and  Walton,  Mary  Pickford,  or 
Secretary  Lansing. 

He  has  shaken  hands  with  Billy  Sunday. 

Wherever  he  goes  he  carries  a  Corona  typewriter.  He 
paid  $50  cash  for  it,  but  nevertheless  he  has  given  the 
manufacturers  an  eloquent  testimonial.  He  writes  on 
cheap  newspaper  copy-paper. 

He  is  fond  of  candy. 

He  is  an  ardent  defender  of  organized  charity,  arguing 
that  it  helps  progress  by  making  charity  difficult  and 
obnoxious. 

He  is  often  mistaken  for  a  misogynist.  He  is  actually 
a  strict  monogamist.  He  believes  that  all  men  are 
naturally  monogamists,  and  that  polygamy  is  due  to 
vanity. 

He  began  to  edit  the  plays  of  Ibsen  in  1910,  but 
abandoned  the  enterprise  after  he  had  issued  "A  Doll's 
House"  and  " Little  Eyolf." 

He  is  a  bitter  opponent  of  Christian  Science,  and  has 
written  all  sorts  of  things,  from  epigrams  to  long  articles, 
against  it. 

The  La  Mencken  cigar,  once  popular  throughout  the 
South,  was  not  named  after  him,  but  after  his  father. 

He  is  a  good  sailor,  and  has  been  seasick  but  once  — 
on  a  1000-ton  British  tramp  in  a  West  Indian  hurricane. 

In  blood  he  is  chiefly  Saxon,  Danish,  Bavarian,  and 
Irish  —  no  Anglo-Saxon,  no  Prussian,  no  Latin.  The 
portraits  of  his  Saxon  forefathers  show  strong  Slavic 
traces.  He  is  the  present  head  of  the  family.  A  Mencken, 


38  PISTOLSFORTWO 

in  the  seventeenth  century,  founded  the  first  scientific 
review  in  Europe.  Another  was  privy  councilor  to 
Frederick  the  Great.  Another  was  rector  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Leipzig.  Yet  another  was  chief  justice  of  the 
supreme  court  there.  A  Mile.  Mencken  was  the  mother 
of  Bismarck. 

The  Menckenii  were  converted  to  Christianity  in 
1569,  but  returned  to  paganism  during  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  in  which  twelve  of  them  were  killed  and  sixty-three 
wounded. 

The  present  Mencken  is  an  amateur  of  military  science, 
and  has  written  a  brochure,  privately  printed,  on  the 
Battle  of  Tannenberg. 

He  writes  very  slowly  and  laboriously,  save  when  writing 
for  newspapers.  Then  he  is  highly  facile,  and  can  turn 
out  a  two-column  article  in  three  hours.  He  has  never 
learned  to  dictate. 

He  used  to  have  a  mole  on  the  back  of  his  neck,  but 
had  it  removed  in  the  summer  of  1913. 

He  is  not  afraid  of  the  dark,  or  of  spiders,  or  of  snakes, 
or  of  cats.  He  likes  dogs  better  than  any  other  animals, 
and  regards  them  as  more  respectable  than  men. 

If  he  could  choose  another  given  name  it  would  be 
Francis. 

He  owns  two  hundred  acres  of  land  near  Innsbruck, 
in  the  Tyrol,  and  will  build  a  bungalow  on  it  after  the 
war. 

He  is  a  violent  anti-Socialist,  as  "Men  vs.  the  Man" 
shows,  but  he  reads  all  the  new  Socialist  books. 

In  American  history  the  men  he  most  admires  are 
Washington,  Jefferson,  Hamilton,  and  Cleveland.  He 
has  a  low  opinion  of  Lincoln,  Jackson,  and  Bryan. 

He  is  handy  with  horses,  and  can  drive  four-in-hand. 

He  detests  cut  flowers,  carpets,  the  sea-shore,  hotels, 
zoological  gardens,  the  subway,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  literary 
women,  witch  hazel,  talcum  powder,  limp  leather  book- 


PISTOLSFORTWO  39 

bindings,  aerated  waters,  bottled  beer,  low  collars,  public 
libraries,  and  phonographs. 

He  is  a  Cockney,  and  prefers  the  city  to  the  country. 

He  never  wears  tan  shoes. 

He  can  swallow  castor  oil  without  disgust  and  without 
needing  a  chaser,  but  he  never  does  so. 

Next  to  Pilsner  and  Burgundy  (or,  in  wartime,  Miche- 
lob)  his  favorite  drink  is  city  water  direct  from  the  tap  — 
no  ice. 

He  chews  cigars. 

He  is  a  very  fast  reader  and  can  get  through  a  two  hun 
dred-page  book  in  an  hour. 

IV 

So  much  for  my  observations  and  investigations  of 
the  two  gentlemen,  MM.  Nathan  and  Mencken.  I  have 
told  you,  not  everything  that  is  known  about  them,  nor 
even  all  that  I  know  myself,  but  enough,  I  hope,  to  enable 
you  to  conjure  up  colorable  images  of  them.  As  I  have 
said,  it  is  by  such  small  and  often  grotesque  lights  that 
character  is  genuinely  illuminated  —  not  by  the  steady 
and  distorting  glare  o  f  orthodox  biography.  It  remains 
for  me  to  tell  you  how  they  do  their  joint  work  —  work 
which  rests  upon  the  apparently  perilous  basis  of  an 
absolute  equality  of  authority,  for  each  owns  exactly 
the  same  amount  of  stock  in  The  Smart  Set  Company 
that  the  other  owns,  and  each  is  editor  equally  with  the 
other,  and  both  derive  from  the  property  exactly  the 
same  revenue,  to  a  cent. 

Their  system  is  very  simple  and  admirably  workable. 
When  either,  by  any  internal  or  external  process,  gen 
erates  an  idea  for  the  conduct  of  the  magazine,  he  lays 
it  before  the  other  in  all  its  details.  This  is  always  done 
in  writing;  never  orally.  If  the  other  approves  the  idea 
he  writes  upon  the  brief  the  words  "Nihil  obstat,"  and 


40  PISTOLS    FOR     TWO 

it  is  forthwith  executed.  If,  on  the  contrary,  he  dis 
approves,  he  indorses  it  with  the  word  "Veto"  and  it 
is  returned.  The  same  idea  may  be  revived  by  its  author 
thirty  days  later,  but  not  before.  If  thrice  vetoed  it  is 
forever  banned.  The  office  records  for  the  past  three 
years  yield  the  following: 

Plans  Proposed     Approved     Vetoed 
By  Nathan  18  13  5 

By  Mencken  12  84 

In  the  handling  of  manuscripts  they  pursue  a  some 
what  analogous  system.  Mencken  never  reads  manu 
scripts  while  in  New  York;  all  such  work  he  does  in 
Baltimore.  As  the  offerings  of  authors  are  received 
in  the  office  they  are  scrutinized  by  Nathan's  secretary, 
and  the  following  classes  are  weeded  out  and  immedi 
ately  returned: 

Mss.  written  in  pencil  or  with  green,  purple,  or  red 
typewriter  ribbons. 

Mss.  fastened  together  with  ribbons  or  pins. 

Mss.  radiating  any  scent  or  other  odor. 

Mss.  of  plays  which  begin  with  soliloquies  into  a  tele 
phone. 

Mss.  bearing  the  recommendations  of  the  editors  of 
other  magazines. 

Mss.  accompanied  by  letters  of  more  than  one  hundred 
words. 

Mss.  accompanied  by  circulars  advertising  books 
written  by  their  authors  or  by  other  printed  matter. 

Mss.  of  poetry  by  poets  whose  names  do  not  appear 
upon  a  list  in  the  possession  of  the  secretary. 

Once  this  preliminary  clearing  out  is  accomplished,  the 
manuscripts  that  remain  are  shipped  to  Mencken,  and  he 
reads  them  within  twenty  four  hours.  Those  that  he  re- 


PISTOLSFORTWO  41 

jects  are  returned  to  their  authors.  Those  that  he  approves 
are  returned  to  Nathan,  with  the  Dano-Norwegian  word 
"bifald,"  signifying  assent,  written  across  the  first  page 
of  each.  They  are  then  read  by  Nathan,  and  if  he  agrees 
they  are  purchased  and  paid  for  at  once.  If  he  disagrees 
they  are  returned  without  further  process.  Once  a 
manuscript  is  bought  it  goes  to  Mencken  a  second  time, 
and  he  reads  it  again.  If  he  finds  that  it  needs  revision 
in  detail,  it  is  turned  over  to  his  private  secretary  and 
valet,  an  intelligent  Maryland  colored  man  named 
William  F.  Beauchamp,  a  graduate  of  Harvard.  After 
it  has  passed  through  Beauchamp' s  hands  it  is  set  up  in 
type.  In  case  Mencken  deems  it  necessary  to  reject  a 
manuscript  by  an  author  who  must  be  treated  politely, 
he  sends  it  back  with  a  note  putting  the  blame  on  Nathan. 
In  case  Nathan,  in  like  circumstances,  votes  no,  he  blames 
it  upon  Mencken.  This,  of  course,  is  lying,  but  in  the 
long  run  it  amounts  to  the  truth.  The  two  never  discuss 
manuscripts;  they  simply  vote.  They  never  buy  any 
thing  from  personal  friends.  They  have  a  strict  agree 
ment,  in  fact,  that  each  will  automatically  veto  anything 
sent  in  by  an  author  with  whom  he  is  on  good  terms. 
This  agreement  is  never  violated.  Nathan,  for  example, 
has  a  brother  who,  under  a  nom  de  plume,  is  a  frequent 
contributor  to  the  leading  magazines,  but  is  barred  from 
The  Smart  Set  by  the  relationship.  In  the  same  way 
Mencken  was,  until  recently,  the  intimate  friend  and  con 
fidant  of  an  eminent  woman  novelist,  but  her  work  has 
never  appeared  hi  The  Smart  Set. 

When  Mencken  is  in  New  York,  he  and  Nathan  meet 
at  The  Smart  Set  office  every  day,  including  Sunday,  at 
10  A.M.,  and  spend  two  hours  discussing  the  minor  busi 
ness  of  the  magazine.  At  noon  they  proceed  to  Del- 
monico's  and  have  luncheon,  returning  at  3  P.M.  They 
finish  all  business  by  4:30,  when  they  leave  the  office. 
They  often  dine  together  and  spend  the  evening  together, 


42  PISTOLSFORTWO 

but  they  never  discuss  office  matters  at  such  times.  They 
never  invite  authors  to  luncheon  or  dinner  and  never 
accept  invitations  from  them.  They  never  attend 
literary  parties  or  visit  studios.  They  are  not  acquainted 
with  any  of  the  literary  lions  of  New  York,  saving  only 
Dreiser  and  Huneker. 

Thus  these  meritorious  redacteurs  live  and  have  their 
being.  Neither  belongs  to  a  literary  clique;  neither 
subscribes  to  a  clipping  bureau;  neither  ever  sits  on  a 
committee  or  joins  a  movement;  neither  needs  money; 
neither  ever  borrows  anything  or  asks  a  favor;  neither 
is  accountable  to  anyone;  neither  is  ever  indignant; 
neither  gives  a  damn. 


' 


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N9   888563 


PS35?7  (Mencken,  Henry  Louis,  1880-1956. 

A72  Pistols  for  two,  by  Owen  Hatteras  {pseud.}     New  York,  A. 

Z8  A.  Knopf,  1917. 

3  p.  1.,  42  p.     19~. 

Owen  Hatteras  Is  the  pseudonym  of  it  L  Mencken  and  G.  J.  Nathan. 
The  book  contains  a  biography  of  Nathan,  Introductory  and  cloning  re 
marks  by  Mencken  and  a  biography  of  Mencken  by  Nathan  cf  Frey 
Carroll.  A  bibliography  of  the  writings  of  H.  L.  Mencken,  Philadelphia, 
1024,  p.  41-42. 

A.  Nathan,  George  Jean,  1882-19^  .2.  Mencken,  Henry  Loafs.  1880-1  O^ 
athan,  George  Jean,  1882-1  rW  tf  Title. 

"•>. 
Library  of  Congress         'ITYD°J     PS3527.A72Z8 


.  ,  ,         -         .. 

•t,  Nathan,  George  Jean,  1882-1  rW  tf  Title 

17-31075  Revised 
.A72Z8 

Cr42b2, 


